National Affiliate Spotlight: Preschool pays off for Kansas district
By Joetta Sack-Min
Research clearly shows that prekindergarten can help students tremendously once they start school, but school leaders often have a hard time finding the necessary funding and coordinating their efforts with other providers.
The Kansas City, Kan., school district has not only overcome those obstacles, it’s also working with Head Start and other local agencies to help train teachers and help its impoverished and increasingly diverse populations prepare for school.
“We believe in early intervention -- the data show that if you support children at an early age, the likelihood of their success is increased,” said Jayson Strickland, the district’s executive director of instruction.
“We just want all the preschool-age students served with a quality program,” he said, “and the district is going to help others do that, because [the children] will end up being in our kindergarten classes.”
The district enrolls more than 500 at-risk 4-year-olds in its half-day preK classes and works with other providers who serve dozens of additional students, said Marylee Griffiths, the district’s preschool coordinator. Kansas City also provides an inclusive preschool for about 260 more 3- and 4-year-olds who have been identified with special needs.
The demand “has just snowballed,” Griffiths said.
Children must meet one of eight criteria to be deemed at-risk and eligible for the program. An eligible child, for instance, might have a teen or single parent or parent who didn’t finish high school or might come from a home where a language other than English is spoken.
Kansas City has created standards to prepare children for kindergarten and shared those standards to help other providers create high-quality programs in line with the district’s goals. Now that the other programs are using the same standards, Griffiths has seen a marked difference in the abilities of the at-risk students when they enter elementary school.
The district PreK program uses themes, such as aquarium life, to teach literacy, math, and early social skills. Strickland and his staff solicit help from businesses, churches, housing managers, and the media to recruit children.
Lately, he said, the programs have become so well-known that many families hear of the services through other families who’ve participated.
What sets Kansas City’s program apart is the amount of training provided to preK teachers and aides. The district has used a federal Reading First grant to hire a literacy coach and it employs three early childhood coaches. The coaches frequently work with preK teachers at other public or private programs, as well.
The district also has set high standards for hiring. All of the preK teachers have at least a bachelor’s degree and experience in early childhood education, and teachers working with special education students have a master’s degree. Even the paraprofessionals must have college credits.
In light of a national shortage of well-trained early childhood specialists, Kansas City attracts well-qualified applicants because it pays higher salaries than other early childhood centers, and those salaries are just slightly less than those of beginning teachers, Griffiths said.
Many Kansas school districts operate a wide variety of preschool and prekindergarten programs, and the Kansas City district “has done a great job,” said Jim Edwards, the assistant executive director at the Kansas Association of School Boards.
KASB is one of the three state school boards associations, along with those in Ohio and Texas, that are working with NSBA’s Center for Public Education on a two-year initiative to inform local school board members, state policymakers, and the general public about the benefits of preK and effective preK policies and programs. The Pew Charitable Trusts is supporting the project. [Visit www.centerforpublic education.org for more information.]
Reproduced with permission from School Board News. Copyright © 2008, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789.